


Pavement

by oneficwonder



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneficwonder/pseuds/oneficwonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there's anything Chibs Telford will always remember, it's the taste of bloody pavement in the slums of Glasgow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pavement

He’s twelve.

There’s a handful of coins in his pocket and the whole damn block seems to know. His fists are up, his fists are sore and split and bleeding, but the blows don’t stop coming; he’s small, small enough to duck, he shows his teeth like a dog and his fist catches underneath a jaw and there’s a yelp and someone’s spitting blood, someone split their tongue. He’s shocked, too shocked to move, but his face doesn’t show it and then he sees stars, a flash of white, and the pavement surges up to catch him. He remembers its gritty taste mixed with the metallic of his own blood. It starts to rain, and when he gets home, he’s beaten for his empty pockets and bloody hands.

He’s eighteen.

Ireland is different, but his tooth is still chipped. He likes it, and so does she. Her tongue likes to explore the crevasses of his mouth and his hands the taut curves of her body, so much smaller than his own. The first time they make love is the night before he’s sent off to the army for the first and only time. Five months changes more than he thinks, and the streets of Belfast are streaked with blood when he comes home hoping to escape it. When he sees her again, they make love like animals, and he puts a ring on her finger. He thinks of tasting the pavement in the slums of Glasgow as he lies next to her smoking a cigarette. The flavors are similar.

He’s twenty-two.

His first kill for the Irish is a single shot to the back of the head. He executes it perfectly, cold and distant, and when they leave he hangs back to vomit behind an empty oil drum. He shakes for two days after that, blaming a chill in his bones, thinking about strapping bricks to his shoes and jumping into the roiling black sea. He’s seen blood, he knows blood like an old friend, but not when it’s on his hands.

He’s twenty-four.

The Army puts him behind bars before the club does. She’s bursting at the seams with child when he goes and he gets a picture, somehow, he gets a picture a few months in, and her tiny, gorgeous face breaks his heart. He spends his days dreaming of her: picturing the wild mop of hair she’ll grow gets him through Heaney’s death; imagining her sweet little voice when she calls him _Da_ gets him through losing a tooth to a guard’s boot. He holds his hands to his lips in prayer for three years and wraps beads around his wrists when he gets out, wraps beads around her beautiful chubby neck when he meets her for the first time.

He’s thirty.

He comes close to killing a brother when they tell him he won’t have a chance to see his family before Jimmy has him on a boat to the States. He can hardly see for the stinging tears in his eyes, and McGee tells him they’ve called Clay Morrow. There’s a place at their table for him in California, he just has to make it there, somehow. The news doesn’t comfort him right away, doesn’t comfort him when he’s on his knees in front of Jimmy a mere few hours later, doesn’t comfort him when he’s curled up in the back of a van with shaking hands on his mutilated and bloody face. He thinks of Glasgow, sleeps for three weeks, and wakes up looking at the Statue of Liberty.

He’s thirty-five.

The scars have healed nicer than he thought they would. He’ll never admit it but he loved the way the young bucks in California eyed him when he first walked through their door, crudely stitched and still scabbed, an unmatched history behind his eyes. He’d introduced himself as Chibs, hesitating only for a moment before producing the nickname they’d smacked on him in the army, before he was comfortable with guns--the other Army had taught him that. Five years later he’s still the one whose job it is to scare the shit out of prospects, to reinforce the stories Tig tells them about the time he gauged someone’s eyes out with his own thumbs for looking at his daughter the wrong way, or carving someone’s organs out for fun as part of a retaliation. He’s good at it, they don’t patch in a single prospect during those entire five years, until a baby-faced Puerto Rican from Queens turns up on their doorstep.

He’s thirty-six.

Chibs is laying on his bike with a beer in hand, balanced on his knee, on the night Juice is patched in. He watched him for awhile, watched Luann’s girls pile on him in the clubhouse while he was poured drink after drink, and the party is still raging when he hears a soft voice next to him utter a small _hey_. He glances up; it’s Juice, standing a few feet away, wavering a little on his feet.  
“I jus’,” he begins, swallows, “I jus’ wanted to -- t’come out and say thank you,” he finishes, leaning heavily on whoever’s bike is next to Chibs’. “Mean... no one else woulda stepped up like that. To sponsor me, y’know.”  
Chibs smiles with half his mouth, looking Juice in his glazed, swimming eyes. He gets to his feet and claps Juice on the shoulder, keeping his hand there, his gaze never faltering.  
“‘Course, brother,” he says softly, and Juice’s eyes light up at the title. Chibs gazes at him for a second, in silence, before he mumbles, “I like you, kid. Want you to stick around. Don’t mess this up, hear me?”  
Juice is grinning now and he hugs Chibs, pulling himself tightly to him, and Chibs hugs him back. They stay that way for several long, long seconds and Chibs hears a soft _thank you_ whispered against his cut.

He’s thirty-eight.

Their first kiss is a sloppy affair. One drunken night up in Nevada visiting the Devil’s Tribe and Chibs sees a crow-eater climb into Juice’s lap, wearing not much more than a cowboy hat and cutoffs, and suddenly Chibs is two shots of whiskey deeper than he intended to be. He grabs Juice by the scruff of his cut and drags him to an empty room, he thinks he locks the door, and their lips collide in the same way he does everything in this club: quick and hard and violent, but meticulously premeditated. He tastes like the pavement in Glasgow and from that moment, Chibs is gone.


End file.
